Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap in ... · Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap in Western Europe: New Challenges and Opportunities for IT Sponsored by:

W H I T E P AP E R

B r i d g i n g t h e I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r P r o d u c t i v i t y G a p i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e : N e w C h a l l e n g e s a n d O p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r I T

Sponsored by: Adobe

Melissa Webster

September 2012

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y

In June 2012, IDC undertook a global survey of information workers and IT

professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia,

and Japan to better understand today's information worker needs and challenges. A

key goal of our survey was to uncover significant time wasters and opportunities to

address workforce productivity. This paper reports our findings and provides

recommendations for IT.

Our survey shows that information workers in Western Europe waste a significant

amount of time each week dealing with a variety of challenges related to working with

documents. This wasted time costs the organization €14,492 per information worker

per year and amounts to a loss of 19.5% in the organization's total productivity.1

For an organization with 1,000 people, addressing these time wasters would be

tantamount to hiring 195 new employees.

This should be welcome news for executives seeking to redeploy resources to spur

innovation, increase profits, and compete effectively in new markets. It should also

capture the attention of CIOs who have been tasked with increasing the

organization's productivity. In IDC's 2011 survey of CIOs in the United States and

Western Europe, CIOs ranked increasing productivity third on the list of business

initiatives that were expected to drive IT investment in 2012 — just behind reducing

the organization's costs and improving the organization's business processes.2

IT is responding with new investments in collaboration tools. Asked about key IT

initiatives for 2012, CIOs ranked improving the organization's collaboration tools third —

behind cloud services and consolidation/virtualization and ahead of big data and

analytics, application consolidation, security and risk management, and a host of other

key IT initiatives. Translating investments in collaboration tools into real productivity

gains has proven to be somewhat elusive in the past, as a decade of IDC research into

the hidden costs of information work shows. What is standing in the way?

One of the key findings of our June 2012 survey is that information work is inherently

document intensive. Much of the time that information workers spend at work involves

working with documents or forms in one way or another — whether researching and

1 See the Appendix for the survey methodology and an explanation of how costs are calculated. 2 The CIO Agenda for 2012 and Beyond: A Look at CIO Sentiment and Priorities, IDC #233098, February 2012

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2 #236579 ©2012 IDC

pulling information together for documents; reviewing, approving, and signing

documents; managing the document review process; or working with forms and forms

data. General-purpose collaboration tools don't fully address information workers'

needs related to these document-based activities.

Specifically, information workers need tools and best practices that make them more

productive in the following areas:

Creating and managing documents

Collaborating around documents and working with forms

Working with documents on mobile devices

As our June 2012 survey also found, some significant gaps in perception exist

between information workers and IT when it comes to current and future needs —

gaps that will only widen with the rapid growth of cloud and mobile computing.

Closing these perception gaps is essential if IT is to deliver against its key productivity

improvement objectives, and this paper looks to help IT achieve that goal.

K E Y C H AR AC T E R I S T I C S O F I N F O R M AT I O N W O R K

If we stop to consider how information work has changed over the past decade, we

see that many of the changes have been dramatic. A far greater percentage of

employees work remotely or from a home office today, and workgroups often span

the globe. Web and video conferencing and tools such as instant messaging and

instant meetings let people collaborate in real time across distance, time zones, and

organizational boundaries, and mobile devices help them be productive "on the go."

Increasingly, enterprise social networks are enabling information workers to share

and find relevant information, locate needed expertise, and come together in self-

organizing groups.

No one would argue that investments in collaboration tools haven't brought returns;

they have. At the same time, as our research over the past decade into the hidden

costs of information work shows, information workers continue to waste a significant

number of hours each week on a variety of unproductive activities.

Certainly, many factors can contribute to this loss in productivity. In some cases, the

culprit is inefficient business processes and/or lack of automation. To some extent, it's

the result of too many separate applications that force the information worker to

become "the glue" between multiple systems.

To gain a better understanding of the nature of information work today — and glean

insights into the activities that cost information workers time — IDC conducted a global

survey of 1,200 information workers and IT professionals in the United States, the

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan in June 2012. Our survey

results highlight significant differences in perceptions between information workers and

IT around current and future needs and reveal opportunities to improve workforce

productivity. This paper provides a detailed analysis of our findings for Western Europe.

©2012 IDC #236579 3

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k I s D o c u m e n t I n t e n s i v e

Our survey reveals that information workers spend most of their time at work each

week performing one document-related activity or another (see Figure 1).

F I G U R E 1

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e I s H i gh l y D o c u m e n t

C e n t r i c

Q. Thinking about your typical workweek, how many hours would you say you spend on the

following document-related activities?

n = 420 information workers in Western Europe, evenly split across the United Kingdom, France,

and Germany

Notes:

Multiple responses were allowed.

Total is 47.1 hours, which is greater than the 44.3 hours information workers say they work each

week; subsequent calculations are based on the higher number (47.1). (See the methodology in

the Appendix.)

Source: IDC's Information Worker Survey, June 2012

0 2 4 6 8 10

Managing approvals,obtaining signatures

Managing review, merging edits/comments

Filling in forms

Filing/organizing documents

Approving/signing documents

Consolidating and analyzing forms data

Searching for documents

Reviewing/providing feedback

Researching/gathering information

Creating documents

(Hours per week)

Activities related to review/approval of documents (collaboration)

Activities related to creating/managing documents (personal productivity)

Information workers spend most of their time at work each week performing one document-related activity or another.

4 #236579 ©2012 IDC

Information workers spend half their time in activities related to document creation

and management, including researching and gathering information for documents,

searching for documents, and filing and organizing documents. This is time spent

working individually, where tools that help improve personal productivity come into

play.

They spend the other half of their time in activities that involve working collaboratively

with documents — that is, getting their documents reviewed and approved; merging

edits and comments from multiple reviewers/versions into a single document;

managing approvals and obtaining signatures, wet stamps, or other marks of

approval on documents; reviewing documents received from others and providing

feedback; approving or signing documents; and dealing with forms or forms data.

Almost two-thirds of this time is spent collaborating with people who don't sit nearby

— that is, people from the information worker's team who work from other locations,

people in other groups, and people from outside the organization. This is where

collaborative tools can help bridge distance, time zones, and organizational

boundaries.

Information workers today increasingly require the ability to work "on the go." Most

want to use their mobile devices to perform the same document-related tasks they

use their PCs for today. All of these devices are being connected to the organization's

network and email systems, and this adds to the complexity of managing networks

and applications for IT.

Further, as our survey shows, the "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend has begun to

take root in Western Europe: 13% of the smartphones information workers use at

work — and more than a third of the tablets — are BYOD today. This further

exacerbates challenges around document and application security and is forcing IT to

rethink its approach to device and information management.

In any case, the demand for mobility is not something IT can resist — no matter how

much it might wish to: It is being driven by information workers at every level of the

organization today, from executives on down.

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r s S p e n d H o u r s E a c h W e e k

D e a l i n g w i t h D o c u m e n t C h a l l e n g e s

Despite significant investments in personal productivity tools and collaborative

applications over the past several years, information workers in Western Europe

spend a significant percentage (43.3%) of their time dealing with a variety of

challenges and frustrations related to working with documents (see Figure 2).

As our research shows, much of this time is wasted time: IDC estimates wasted time

costs the organization €14,492 per information worker per year in compensation costs

alone.

Information workers need to be able to work "on the go" using smartphones and tablets. Most want to use their mobile devices to perform the same document-related tasks they use their PCs for today.

Information workers spend half their time in activities related to document creation and management, and they spend the other half in activities that involve working collaboratively with documents.

Time wasted in the course of dealing with document-related challenges costs the organization €14,492 per information worker per year in compensation costs alone.

©2012 IDC #236579 5

F I G U R E 2

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r s i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e S p en d a S i g n i f i c a n t

P e r c e n t a g e o f T h e i r T i m e D e a l i n g w i t h a V a r i e t y o f D o c u m en t

C h a l l e n g e s

Q. There are many things that can take up a lot of extra time when working with documents.

How many hours a week do you spend on each of the following?


and Germany

Notes:

Multiple responses were allowed.

Total is 20.4 hours, or 43.3% of the time spent on Figure 1 activities.


Subsequent sections of this study look in more detail at the three areas we

highlighted previously — areas we believe IT should target for productivity

improvements: creating and managing documents (personal productivity),

collaborating with others around documents, and working with documents on mobile

devices. We believe IT has an opportunity to make improvements fairly inexpensively.

0 1 2 3 4

Recreating documents that can't be found

Unraveling version control problems

Searching for, but not f inding, documents

Deciphering the feedback

Dealing with problems, time-consuming tasks due to paper

Consolidating data f rom forms

Pulling information f rom dif ferent f iles and formats into one document

Gathering and consolidating feedback

(Hours per week)



6 #236579 ©2012 IDC

B O O S T I N G I N F O R M A T I O N W O R K E R S ' P E R S O N AL P R O D U C T I V I T Y

Let's begin with information worker challenges related to personal productivity.

Information workers in Western Europe spend 9.4 hours per week dealing with

challenges around creating and managing content (see Table 1). Much of this is

wasted time.

Fruitless searches and missed opportunities for content reuse are entirely wasted

time, and at least a quarter of the time information workers spend dealing with issues

that arise using paper documents and pulling information together from multiple

sources into one document is also wasted time. This means they waste 4.9 hours per

week dealing with challenges related to document creation and management.

T A B L E 1

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r T i m e S p en t / W a s t e d D ea l i n g w i t h C h a l l e n g e s R e l a t e d t o

P e r s o n a l P r o du c t i v i t y i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e

Hours

Spent

per

Week

% of

Time

Spent

Hours

Wasted

per Week

% of

Time

Wasted

% of

Organizational

Productivity Lost

Pulling information that exists in different files and

formats together in one document

3.1 6.7% 0.8 1.7% 1.3%

Dealing with problems and time-consuming tasks that

arise with paper documents

2.8 6.0% 0.7 1.5% 1.2%

Searching for, but not finding, documents 1.9 4.0% 1.9 4.0% 3.2%

Recreating documents because the current or the

right version can't be found or got lost

1.5 3.2% 1.5 3.2% 2.6%

Total 9.4 19.9% 4.9 10.4% 8.4%

n = 420 information workers in Western Europe, evenly split across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany

Notes:

Percentages are based on reported 47.1 hours per week spent on Figure 1 activities and 80.6% of employees being

information workers. (See the methodology in the Appendix.)

All numbers in this table may not be exact due to rounding.


Time wasted in document creation and management activities costs the organization

€6,250 per information worker per year. The cost in lost productivity is huge when we

add this up for the organization as a whole: It amounts to an 8.4% loss in the

organization's total productivity. Eliminating the time wasters related to creating and

managing documents would be equivalent to adding 84 new employees in a

1,000-person company.

Information workers spend 9.4 hours a week dealing with challenges related to document creation and management. At least 4.9 hours of this is wasted time.

Time wasted in document creation and management activities costs the organization €6,250 per information worker per year.

©2012 IDC #236579 7

P e r s i s t e n c e o f P a p e r D o c u m e n t s a C o n t r i b u t o r

Despite attempts to eliminate paper via document automation and other technologies

over the years, paper continues to be prevalent. We asked information workers in

Western Europe what percentage of the time they spend dealing with documents is

spent working with documents in paper rather than electronic form; the answer is

21.9%. Use of paper is declining, but only modestly: 38.1% of information workers in

Western Europe say the percentage of documents they deal with that are paper

based has declined in the past year, but 13.3% say it has increased. As noted

previously, dealing with problems and time-consuming tasks that arise with paper

documents eats up 2.8 hours of an information worker's time each week.

Reasons for the persistence of paper include requirements for physical signatures

(and lack of comfort with electronic signatures), old habits, the need to file or submit

documents in paper form (or fill out forms by hand), and the need to print documents

for use in the field where it's difficult to take along a PC.

IT is somewhat aware of the continued reliance on paper: Over a third of IT

respondents say their organization's systems are still far too paper based. IT

underestimates the impact this has, however, on both productivity and costs.

Implications for IT

IT needs to focus more attention on improving information workers' personal

productivity related to creating and managing documents and eliminating the time

wasters. Content management and search technologies are only part of the answer.

IT should engage with information workers to define strategies for reducing the need for

paper and improving the efficiency of business processes that require transitions in and

out of paper. Paper documents aren't searchable and are difficult to manage, and we

believe the persistence of paper documents and forms in the organization is a contributor

to all of the time wasters itemized in Table 1. Capture, esignatures (where legally

enforceable or recognized), vaulting, and other document-based technologies can help

address many of the root causes of the continued reliance on paper. Increased use of

tablets can help here too: IDC research shows tablet users print significantly fewer

documents. We believe information workers are aware of the disadvantages of paper-

based documents and are looking to IT for help with both tools and best practices.

Document-oriented technologies can also make it easier for information workers to

pull information together from multiple electronic formats/sources to create new

documents and create "collections" of related documents that can be managed as

single objects with rich metadata that makes the content more discoverable.

A D D R E S S I N G I N F O R M AT I O N W O R K E R S ' D O C U M E N T C O L L A B O R A T I O N N E E D S

As noted previously, information work in Western Europe is highly collaborative: On

average, information workers spend a little over half their time collaborating with

others inside and outside the organization. A majority of this time is spent

Paper continues to be prevalent: 21.9% of the time information workers spend dealing with documents is spent working with paper documents today.

Capture, esignatures (where legally enforceable or recognized), vaulting, and other document-based technologies can help address many of the root causes of the continued reliance on paper.

Document-oriented technologies make it easier to pull information together from multiple formats/sources, create new documents from existing content, and create "collections" of related documents.

8 #236579 ©2012 IDC

collaborating with people in other locations, departments, or organizations —

underscoring the need for tools that make it easier to collaborate across distance,

time zones, and organizational boundaries.

Time spent collaborating includes time spent on document review and approval

processes and dealing with forms and forms data. Information workers in Western

Europe spend almost a quarter of their workweek dealing with challenges related to

document review and approval and working with forms (see Table 2).

Again, much of this is wasted time. Time spent unraveling version control issues that

are created by awkward collaborative processes and consolidating data from forms (a

task that begs for better automation) is entirely wasted time. Similarly, we estimate

conservatively that a quarter of the time information workers spend gathering and

consolidating feedback and deciphering that feedback could be eliminated through

the use of better document-based collaboration tools.

T A B L E 2

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r T i m e S p en t / W a s t e d D ea l i n g w i t h C h a l l e n g e s R e l a t e d t o

C o l l a bo r a t i o n i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e

Hours

Spent

per

Week

% of

Time

Spent

Hours

Wasted

per Week

% of

Time

Wasted

% of

Organizational

Productivity Lost

Gathering everyone's feedback and consolidating it

into a single document

3.7 7.8% 0.9 1.9% 1.6%

Consolidating data from forms 3.1 6.6% 3.1 6.6% 5.3%

Deciphering the feedback 2.4 5.1% 0.6 1.3% 1.0%

Unraveling version control problems created by

awkward routing, review, approval, or signature

processes

1.9 4.0% 1.9 4.0% 3.2%

Total 11.0 23.4% 6.5 13.7% 11.1%

n = 420 information workers in Western Europe, evenly split across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany

Notes:

Percentages are based on reported 47.1 hours per week spent on Figure 1 activities and 80.6% of employees being

information workers. (See the methodology in the Appendix.)

All numbers in this table may not be exact due to rounding.


This adds up to 6.5 hours of wasted time each week at an annual cost of €8,242 per

information worker. Again, the cost to the organization in lost productivity is

enormous: an 11.1% drop in total productivity. Addressing these time wasters would

be the equivalent of adding 111 new employees in a 1,000-person company.

Information workers waste 6.5 hours per week dealing with document collaboration challenges — at an annual cost of €8,242 per information worker.

Information workers in Western Europe spend almost a quarter of their workweek dealing with challenges related to document review and approval and working with forms.

©2012 IDC #236579 9

N e e d f o r D o c u m e n t - B a s e d C o l l a b o r a t i o n

Time wasted in edit, review, and approval processes and dealing with forms can be

traced to a variety of frustrations that improved document collaboration processes can

significantly ameliorate or eliminate altogether (see Figure 3).

F I G U R E 3

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r F r u s t r a t i o n s R e l a t e d t o W o r k i n g w i t h

D o c u m e n t s i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e

Q. What are some of the biggest frustrations you face working with documents?


and Germany

Note: The figure shows the percentage of respondents who rated each item 4 or 5 on a scale of

1 to 5, where 1 means they strongly disagree and 5 means they strongly agree.


0 10 20 30 40 50

It is hard to analyze the data I gather when using forms

Documents sent to others don't always view/print correctly

It is dif f icult or time consuming to create online forms

Time following up with people to get documents reviewed

Can't easily make paper-based information electronic

Sometimes, people I send documents to can't open them

Dif f iculty communicating with others in dif ferent time zones

Getting my documents approved takes a lot of time

Obtaining signed forms is a slow, manual process

Getting signatures on a document is time consuming

Time collecting/consolidating everyone's feedback

Time-consuming searches through email attachments

(% of respondents)



10 #236579 ©2012 IDC

These findings suggest that the general-purpose collaborative applications provided

to information workers in the past (including messaging, team sites, conferencing,

and so forth) don't fully address the highly document-centric nature of information

work: Information workers also need support for document-based collaboration (see

Figure 4). Capabilities include:

Commenting and annotation. Two-thirds of information workers in Western

Europe say being able to see other people's comments on documents they have

been given to review and/or the use of commenting tools in the document itself

would save them time.

Document portability and fidelity. More than a quarter of information workers

in Western Europe say the people to whom they send documents can't always

open them (because they don't use the same desktop software); similarly, more

than a quarter say the people to whom they send documents can't always view or

print them correctly. Altogether, more than a third of information workers in

Western Europe cite one or both of these frustrations. Information workers in

smaller companies are more affected than those in larger companies, likely

because larger companies have standardized their desktop software to a greater

extent. Still, this is a significant area of frustration for information workers across

the board.

eForms. Forms-related workflows are an area of frustration for half of information

workers. Information workers in Western Europe spend 7.5 hours per week filling

in forms and consolidating/analyzing information they have collected via forms;

nearly half of this is wasted time. Today, this is largely a manual effort: Only 4%

of our information worker respondents in Western Europe are using an electronic

forms product.

Signatures and approvals. Information workers in Western Europe spend 6.7

hours per week obtaining signatures on documents and getting documents

approved, as well as signing or approving documents. This is a good target for

better automation.

Document security and governance. The moment a document leaves the

author's hands, document security concerns begin — especially when a

document is shared with external collaborators.

General-purpose collaborative applications don't fully address the highly document-centric nature of information work: Information workers also need support for document-based collaboration.

©2012 IDC #236579 11

F I G U R E 4

S p e c i f i c I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r N e e d s i n W o r k i n g w i t h D o c u m e n t s

i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e

Q. Regarding your specific needs related to working with documents, please rate the

following...


and Germany




0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Ability to sign a document on my mobile device would save time

Ability to comment on a document using my mobile device would save time

Ability to access documents on my mobile device would save time

Using commenting tools in the document itself would save me time

Need to ensure conf idential information is deleted before distributed

Need to make sure only certain people can see my document

Seeing others' comments on a document I'm reviewing would save time

Need to make sure people can't edit once document is f inalized

Having a record of an approval of a document is important

Document must look/behave as intended, even on mobile

Need to f ile/archive document for future reference

Must follow my organization's policy for publishing documents

(% of respondents)



Activities related to interacting with documents on mobile devices

12 #236579 ©2012 IDC

I m p o r t a n c e o f E x t e r n a l C o l l a b o r a t i o n

IT seriously underestimates the importance of external collaboration to the

organization's information workers. We asked IT respondents in Western Europe

what percentage of their employees collaborate with people outside the organization;

their answer was just 23.4%. (The number wasn't much higher when we asked what

they thought this percentage would be two years from now.) In fact, 91.4% of

information workers already collaborate with people outside the organization on a

weekly basis, and the average information worker spends 4.8 hours per week

doing so.

S a a S A d o p t i o n

In organizations where IT fails to address information workers' external collaboration

needs, information workers devise their own strategies. The need for easy

collaboration and sharing of documents with people outside the organization has

driven user adoption of cloud-based (SaaS) file upload/sharing services, many of

which are geared more to consumers than enterprises.

IT organizations in Western Europe are aware of this and are struggling to respond by

putting policies in place. These policies range widely from forbidding employees to use

SaaS services that are not expressly sanctioned and supported by IT (54.4%) to trying

to discourage the use of such services (18.9%) to capitulating and letting users do as

they wish (4.4%). Increasingly, IT is engaging with users to understand their needs and

put solutions in place to support them — solutions that keep IT in control and ensure

information is secure (15.6%). Some are embracing a cloud-first strategy (6.7%).

SaaS is on IT's radar: One-fifth of information worker applications in Western Europe

are SaaS today, and IT respondents expect this percentage to grow to more than a

third within two years. IT expects to increase SaaS use across a variety of

collaboration use cases, including email/calendar, online forms, Web and video

conferencing, team sites, extranets, online file sharing, and esignatures.

As we know from other IDC research, concerns around compliance with country-

specific laws that enact the EU Data Protection Directive play a role in deciding how

and where cloud services are used. Still, in this day and age, two years is a long time

frame, and we think IT needs to be more aggressive — especially where external

collaboration is involved. Just 22.8% of IT organizations in Western Europe have

deployed a SaaS extranet solution today to at least 10% of their users. Past efforts to

develop and deploy extranets to meet users' external collaboration needs haven't

been entirely satisfactory: 40.6% of IT respondents say building extranets to enable

secure collaboration and file sharing has been an expensive proposition and they

need a better alternative. SaaS offers a way forward. Other promising use cases for

SaaS that IT should explore include online forms, online file sharing, and esignatures

where legally enforceable or recognized.

In organizations where IT fails to address information workers' external collaboration needs, information workers devise their own strategies. This has driven adoption of SaaS file sharing services, many of which are geared more to consumers.

IT seriously underestimates the importance of external collaboration. The vast majority of information workers collaborate with people outside the organization on a weekly basis.

©2012 IDC #236579 13

D o c u m e n t a n d A p p l i c a t i o n S e c u r i t y

While half of IT respondents in Western Europe agree that enabling easier/better

collaboration with people outside the organization is important to users, IT is

extremely concerned about the security of information that is exchanged with external

collaborators: Three-quarters say it's critical to ensure the security and privacy of

information in documents and files — especially when they travel outside the firewall.

IT's concerns appear to be well founded: 21.7% say their organization has

experienced an information leak within the past 12 months (see Figure 5).

Organizations are employing a variety of document security strategies to protect

sensitive information in their documents, including file encryption, passwords on

individual documents, digital signatures/certificates, secure file upload/managed file

transfer/portals, and digital rights management (DRM) or enterprise rights

management (ERM). Western Europe is in the lead when it comes to the use of

digital signatures/certificates (60.6% versus 44.4% outside Europe) and DRM/ERM

(38.3% versus 23.3% outside Europe), but use of these technologies varies by

country — both are in wider use in France and Germany than in the United Kingdom.

(Germany and France were early adopters of digital signatures. Legislation in these

countries is more granular due to strict employment and commercial practices; in

Germany, greater government regulation of certificate authorities [CAs] has led to a

higher level of confidence in the security of digital signatures.) Secure file

upload/managed file transfer/portals are in use in about half of organizations

(compared with 68.3% in the United States). All of these are valuable strategies and

have different applications, and we recommend IT organizations proactively

investigate those they haven't already put to use.

The need to manage and secure sensitive information and documents is also closely

related to application security, another top concern for IT and the number one issue

for 82.8% of IT respondents in Western Europe when it comes to deployment and

support of desktop applications — ranking higher than cost, compatibility with IT's

existing operating system and application environment, ease of management and

deployment, impact on the complexity of the desktop stack, and the skill sets and

additional support staff needed to support the software, among other concerns.

IT has significant exposure in this particular area, however. Only 29.4% of

organizations in Western Europe have a policy in place to apply security patches

within two weeks of release, and only 58.3% have a policy in place to apply them

within a month; about a fifth have no policy at all. This is further complicated by the

fact that it is time consuming for IT to manage desktop software upgrades for the

existing, predominantly PC-based environment: 38.3% of IT respondents say it takes

them more than 45 minutes per PC to roll out an update. Adopting deployment

automation tools can significantly reduce the time and effort required.

21.7% of IT respondents in Western Europe say their organization has experienced an information leak within the past 12 months.

The need to manage and secure sensitive information and documents is also closely related to application security. IT has significant exposure in this particular area, however.

Organizations are employing a variety of document security strategies to protect sensitive information in their documents.

14 #236579 ©2012 IDC

F I G U R E 5

T o p - o f - M i n d I T C o n c e r n s i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e

Q. Please rate your level of agreement with the following statements…

n = 180 IT respondents in Western Europe, evenly split across the United Kingdom, France, and

Germany




0 20 40 60 80

We have experienced an information leak in the past 12 months

Our business processes are still far too paper based

Building extranets to enable secure collaboration/f ile sharing has been expensive

Document portability across the myriad devices in our organization is a concern

Hackers attacking our network and systems is a growing concern for us

Enabling easier/better collaboration with people outside our organization is important

to users

We don't want to give people f rom outside access to our network

Ensuring security/privacy of information is critical — especially outside the f irewall

(% of respondents)



Activities related to interacting with documents on mobile devices

Activities related to document security and governance

©2012 IDC #236579 15

Implications for IT

Given the significant amount of time information workers waste in activities related to

document review and approval and working with forms and forms data, IT should

proactively investigate document-based collaboration technologies that provide the

following capabilities:

Commenting and annotation, which enable information workers to see others'

comments on documents they are reviewing

Document portability, which ensures information workers can open, view, and

print documents others send to them using their device(s) of choice with full

fidelity

eForms, which help automate data collection and consolidation

eSignatures, which streamline the approval process

The significant gap in perception between IT and information workers around the

importance and pervasiveness of external collaboration and sharing may help explain

why information worker productivity improvements have been so difficult to achieve.

The user base that IT needs to support around collaboration and secure sharing of

documents with people outside the firewall is much, much larger than IT realizes, and

IT needs to focus greater attention on two key areas: facilitating external collaboration

(particularly around sharing of information) and document and application security.

A D D R E S S I N G I N F O R M AT I O N W O R K E R S ' P R O D U C T I V I T Y N E E D S O N T H E G O : M O B I L E

Information workers want to be more productive "on the go" and are pushing IT for

support. The number of mobile devices on the enterprise network has grown rapidly

over the past few years:

Half of information workers in Western Europe use a smartphone for work today,

and nearly two-thirds expect to a year from now.

13.8% of information workers use a tablet for work today, and a third expect to a

year from now.

The push for smartphones has been driven by information workers at all levels of the

organization. Tablets, on the other hand, have been driven largely by executives.

There have been plenty of stories in the press about CEOs marching into IT and

demanding email and network support for their iPads, and our survey data suggests

this trend will continue: More than a third of executive information workers in Western

Europe use tablets for work purposes today, and almost two-thirds expect to within

the next 12 months.

The user base that IT needs to support around collaboration and secure sharing of documents with people outside the firewall is much, much larger than IT realizes.

16 #236579 ©2012 IDC

M o b i l e U s e C a s e s

Information workers in Western Europe who use mobile devices for work are using

their mobile devices to perform many of the same document-oriented tasks they

perform on their PCs, and they hope to be able to do a lot more with documents in the

future (see Figure 6).

F I G U R E 6

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r U s e C a s e s f o r M o b i l e D ev i c e s i n W e s t e r n

E u r o p e

Q. Which of the following work-related activities are things you are doing today using a

smartphone or tablet, and which are things you would like to be able to do?


and Germany

Base = current mobile device users, n = 215


0 20 40 60 80 100

Sign documents

Fill/submit form

Approve forms/documents

Create/edit documents

Comment on documents

View own documents

Send a document to someone

Review documents

Use email/calendar

(% of respondents)

Do today Want to do

Information workers in Western Europe perform many of the same document-oriented tasks on their mobile devices that they perform on their PCs, and they hope to be able to do a lot more in the future.

©2012 IDC #236579 17

In our conversations with IT organizations about mobile collaboration, we often hear

that once users are given access to email and calendaring from their mobile

device(s), they then request access to documents. Certainly, the need to open and

view email attachments is a catalyst, but as our survey shows, information workers

want to be able to perform the full range of document-oriented activities using their

mobile devices — whether it's commenting on, editing, or signing documents; filling

out forms; or approving forms or documents. As Figure 4 shows, information workers

believe the ability to access, comment on, and electronically sign documents using

their mobile devices will save them time and improve their productivity.

Our survey results suggest that IT is in reactive mode when it comes to mobile

productivity and is somewhat underestimating information worker demand. For example:

While half of information workers in Western Europe use a smartphone for work

today, IT's estimate is closer to a third; and while nearly two-thirds of information

workers expect to be using a smartphone a year from now, IT's estimate is that

about half of information workers will be using a smartphone two years from now.

Three-quarters of smartphone and tablet users would like to be able to perform

the full range of document use cases listed in Figure 6. While more than three-

quarters of IT organizations in Western Europe plan to enable these use cases in

the next two years or are evaluating them, only a little over a third of IT

organizations support these use cases today.

S u p p o r t f o r B Y O D

As noted previously, a growing percentage of the mobile devices attached to the

enterprise network are provided by employees. Here, too, we find a gap in perception

between information workers and IT in Western Europe: According to information

workers in Western Europe, 13% of the smartphones and more than a third of the

tablets they use for work are BYOD; IT's estimate is close for smartphones (10.1%)

but is much lower (6.6%) for tablets.

Although IT foresees growth in these percentages over the next two years, IT

appears to be responding cautiously to user demand: Only 19.4% of IT respondents

in Western Europe say their organization is encouraging employees to bring their own

devices to work.

Implications for IT

We believe information workers will continue to push for mobile enablement of

document use cases, and IT needs to provide more proactive support. In some

organizations, mobile support is provided by a separate team (or is outsourced

entirely), which can reduce IT's visibility into emerging user needs. IT needs to decide

whether mobile devices represent a tactical convenience or a strategic platform for

information worker productivity and application deployment — and plan accordingly.

We also expect user demand for BYOD will continue to grow. Embracing BYOD can offer

significant cost savings to the organization: Some IT organizations we have spoken with

tell us BYOD is allowing them to shift the responsibility for monthly carrier charges back to

the employee, reversing the decades-old trend to company-provided mobile phones.

User demand for BYOD will continue to grow. Embracing BYOD can offer significant cost savings to the organization.

18 #236579 ©2012 IDC

As employee-owned devices increasingly hold sensitive documents and other

confidential information, IT's role is shifting away from device management to the

management of the information on those devices. Document security will become

more important.

In addition, IT must also evolve its desktop management practices — especially in an

increasingly multidevice world. Two-thirds of IT respondents are already factoring in

device support when planning new desktop software purchases, and IT is embracing a

variety of strategies that simplify application provisioning and management, such as

software and hardware consolidation, client virtualization, and "hotdesk" strategies. But

managing networks that are characterized by the rapid proliferation of devices of all types

— a proliferation that is accelerated by BYOD — represents a major challenge for IT.

Going forward, better automation of desktop and application management will become

increasingly important to freeing up IT resources for innovation and new solution delivery.

I M P O R T AN C E O F D O C U M E N T S T A N D A R D S

With the rise of mobile computing, the importance of document standards has once

again come to the fore: Standards are critical for document interoperability across

diverse computing platforms, and given the central role documents play in the life of

an information worker, strong support for widely adopted document standards should

be an important criterion for desktop software evaluation.

Document standards generally fall into two categories:

Authoring standards (e.g., ODF and OpenXML)

Distribution standards (e.g., PDF, EPUB)

Generally, authoring standards are good for document creation but aren't strong when

it comes to document sharing and collaboration, which is where document distribution

standards come into play. Without standards, information workers have no guarantee

that those with whom they share documents will be able to open, view, or print them

with full fidelity.

T h e P D F S t a n d a r d

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format that encodes and renders documents

in a manner that is independent of both the application software (authoring tools) used

to create them and the computing platforms (hardware and operating systems) used to

view them. PDF supports rich media, embedded Web links, CAD information and vector

graphics, and other types of content, including 3D diagrams. The PDF standard, which

includes several specializations defined for specific use cases, is published by the

International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000.

PDF viewers are ubiquitous and freely available on PCs, smartphones, and tablets,

and PDF is by far the most commonly used document distribution standard in

organizations today. 78.2% of our IT respondents in Western Europe say PDF is

widely used in their organizations, and 70% of our information worker respondents

use it (after Microsoft Office, it's the document tool or technology they use the most).

PDF is by far the most commonly used document distribution standard in organizations today.

IT must evolve its desktop management practices — especially in an increasingly multidevice world — if it is to free up resources for innovation and new solution delivery.

©2012 IDC #236579 19

In addition to printing and distributing documents, PDF is also widely used for

archiving. Use of PDF is higher in larger organizations (77.1% of information workers

in organizations with 50,000+ employees use PDF versus 61.8% of information

workers in organizations with fewer than 500 employees).

P D F - B a s e d S o f t w a r e S o l u t i o n s

Many vendors have implemented elements of the PDF standard in their software

solutions. Authoring tools, for example, may include a "Save as" PDF option for easy

PDF creation; this helps smooth the transition from document creation to distribution.

Other vendors offer software tools that implement a more significant percentage of

the PDF standard. These tools enable information workers to create interactive PDF

documents that provide a richer user experience; for example, filling out a form or

interacting with embedded rich media or 3D graphics.

Finally, a few vendors offer tools that extend the PDF standard with additional

functionality; these extensions may well find their way into future versions of the PDF

standard. In addition to helping information workers with document creation/management

and collaboration activities, these tools can help information workers automate some of

their document-driven business processes; for example, signing contracts, redacting

sensitive information, or "electronifying" paper via optical character recognition (OCR).

A d d i t i o n a l C a p a b i l i t i e s o f A d v a n c e d P D F

S o l u t i o n s

Advanced PDF solutions can help address all three of our information worker

productivity areas. For example, in the area of document creation and management,

advanced PDF software enables information workers to merge multiple document

formats and content types into a single (PDF) document, preserving the original

documents' look and feel. They can also append new content to an existing PDF.

Support for multiple file attachments and portable collections makes it easy to group

associated documents together so they can be managed as a single object. These

capabilities can reduce the amount of time information workers waste today pulling

information from different files and formats together in one document, searching for

documents, and recreating them when they can't be found.

Similarly, advanced PDF software may include OCR capabilities that let information

workers "electronify" their paper documents — making them searchable, reusable,

and much easier to manage and helping information workers reduce their reliance on

paper. The use of PDFs on mobile devices (particularly tablets) offers another

opportunity to reduce the amount of paper the organization needs to deal with (the

need to print documents so they can be used where it's difficult to take a PC was a

leading reason why paper remains prevalent in the organization): As IDC research

shows, tablet use significantly reduces printing.

Advanced PDF software can help address the myriad challenges associated with

document-based collaboration discussed previously, including gathering and

consolidating feedback on a document and eliminating version control problems

that arise with awkward routing, review, approval, or signature processes. As noted

Advanced PDF solutions merge multiple document formats and content types into a single document, preserving the original documents' look and feel.

OCR capabilities can help information workers "electronify" their paper documents — making them searchable, reusable, and much easier to manage and reducing the need for paper.

20 #236579 ©2012 IDC

previously, electronic forms are underutilized today, and dealing with forms costs the

average information worker several hours each week.

Advanced PDF software responds to many of IT's document security and information

privacy concerns — especially in regard to documents that travel outside the firewall

— with a variety of document protection strategies, some of which (for example,

password protection) are already widely used and some of which (for example, digital

signatures) deserve to be. Support for redaction gives information workers an

important tool for ensuring confidential information is deleted from documents before

they are distributed — a pain point that is highlighted in Figure 4.

Finally, advanced PDF software can provide support for mobile information workers

who wish to create, edit, review, sign, and approve documents on their smartphones

and tablets and interact with forms.

Implications for IT

Most organizations aren't leveraging the full power of PDF today, and this is a missed

opportunity. Information workers need strong PDF tools along with training, support,

and best practices, and we believe this is an area where IT can have a significant

impact on information worker productivity at minimal cost to the organization.

First, IT needs to ensure users have basic PDF capabilities. As noted previously, more

than a third of information workers in Western Europe voice frustration that others are

often unable to open, view, or print their documents. This is a problem the PDF standard

has addressed since inception, and yet PDF users struggle just as much with this as non-

PDF users. Why has this problem persisted? IT certainly appreciates the benefits PDF

brings in regard to document distribution: 68.2% of IT respondents in Western Europe

agree that a key benefit of PDF is document portability across all their devices (especially

mobile). As the saying goes, however, "the devil is in the details," and PDF creation tools

are not all created equal. IT can help by rigorously evaluating PDF software tools to

ensure they produce high-quality PDF files with full fidelity across all devices.

Then, IT should explore how advanced PDF software can improve information worker

productivity. Too often, use of PDF begins and ends with document distribution.

Advanced PDF software can help improve information worker productivity in three key

areas: document creation and management (personal productivity), document

edit/review/approval (collaboration), and mobility.

C O N C L U S I O N A N D R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

In the past, IT has focused plenty of attention on providing users a variety of real-time

and asynchronous collaborative tools that make it easier to connect with others

electronically and work across geographical, time zone, and organizational boundaries.

These solutions are essential to the way we work today: It would be difficult to imagine

returning to a world without email and calendaring, Web conferencing, and so forth.

But these technologies don't address many of the information worker's needs and

challenges related to working with documents. As our research shows, some of these

challenges arise as information workers work independently on document creation

Most organizations aren't leveraging the full power of PDF today, and this is a missed opportunity where IT can help. Information workers need strong PDF tools along with training, support, and best practices.

IT has focused plenty of attention on providing real-time and asynchronous collaborative tools. These solutions are essential to the way we work today, but they aren't enough.

Advanced PDF software responds to many of IT's document security and information privacy concerns — especially in regard to documents that travel outside the firewall. Such tools implement a broad range of document protection strategies.

©2012 IDC #236579 21

and management activities; others are related to document collaboration. In addition,

information workers need to be able to work with documents on their mobile devices.

IT should engage with users to prioritize the most significant document-oriented

challenges for their organization and address them with specific remedies.

The potential payback is enormous: As our study shows, a significant percentage of

an information worker's time is wasted, at a cost of €14,492 per information worker

per year in Western Europe. Just as IT organizations are looking to increase the

percentage of the budget that is tied to innovation (as opposed to "keep the lights on"

activities), organizations need to reexamine how information workers spend their time

and look for ways to shift a greater percentage of it to real value creation. Recovering

lost information worker productivity would enable organizations to invest more of their

existing resources in sales, support, product development, and market development.

As IT embarks on its assessment of the current state of information work in the

organization, it should keep in mind the following:

IT should investigate solutions — such as advanced PDF software — that make

it easier to work with documents and address the information worker productivity

challenges we have discussed in this paper. These solutions complement the

organization's existing investments in collaborative applications, and the cost of

the additional tooling can be modest. Where PDF is already in use, IT should

assess how effectively it's being used because implementations of the standard

vary in completeness and quality.

IT needs to rethink information worker productivity in the context of the

industrywide shift under way to what IDC calls the 3rd platform — that is, an IT

infrastructure that leverages cloud, mobile, social, and big data technologies. IT

needs to become an enabler of mobile information work, and it should proactively

investigate SaaS solutions for external collaboration, which — as we have seen

— is an important and nearly universal requirement of information work today.

Because information work involves a significant amount of external collaboration, the

tools and best practices that IT provides must, at the same time, address the security

concerns that arise when documents are shared with people outside the firewall. This

requires adoption of document-based tools and best practices that minimize the

chance of information leaks, which are already a problem in many organizations.

IT needs to significantly improve its desktop management practices — both to

reduce its exposure to security threats and to reduce the amount of time it spends

dealing with administrative (keep the lights on) tasks. This will become increasingly

important as the number and the variety of devices that are attached to the

enterprise network continue to grow and as IT is called upon to manage and secure

information that lives in the cloud, on premise, or in hybrid environments.

Above all, IT should begin with a gap analysis. The organization's information workers

will be the best source of insight and inspiration when it comes to prioritizing needed

improvements. The first step is closing the perception gaps between information

workers and IT.

IT should investigate solutions — such as advanced PDF software — that make it easier to work with documents and address the information worker productivity challenges we have discussed in this paper.

IT must also address the security concerns that arise when documents are shared with people outside the firewall. Adopting document-based tools and best practices can minimize the chance of information leaks.

Organizations need to reexamine how information workers spend their time and look for ways to shift a greater percentage of it to real value creation.

22 #236579 ©2012 IDC

A P P E N D I X

M e t h o d o l o g y

The information for this white paper came from a global survey of 1,200 information

workers and IT professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France,

Germany, Australia, and Japan conducted in June 2012. We surveyed both

information workers (n = 840) and IT professionals (n = 360) across a broad range of

industries and company sizes (we screened for companies that have at least 50

employees who have dedicated PCs). Respondents were randomly recruited from

international panels, and the survey was conducted over the Internet in local

languages. We recruited 200 respondents per country, including 140 information

workers, 30 IT management, and 30 IT staff. Data was not weighted.

For the purposes of our study, we defined an information worker as a full-time (non-IT)

employee who is connected to the Internet and uses a computer to work with

documents on a weekly basis as part of his or her job. Working with documents

includes activities such as creating documents; sending documents around for review,

approvals, and signatures; creating forms to gather data and filling in forms; and

reviewing, approving, and signing documents that others send out. Our information

worker respondents represented a good mix of functional areas, and 62% of them were

managers or above.

IT management included IT executives, vice presidents, and directors (also managers

in Japan) who have decision-making authority over or are involved in evaluating

and/or making recommendations in regard to their organization's desktop productivity

software.

IT staff included managers, supervisors, and others who are directly involved in the

evaluation/selection, testing, support, or deployment of their organization's desktop

productivity software.

We asked information worker respondents detailed questions about the time they

spend each week on a variety of document-oriented activities; the time they spend

dealing with various challenges working with documents; their frustrations and needs

in this regard; who they collaborate with; and their needs related to mobility.

We asked IT respondents detailed questions about IT's priorities, key concerns, and

current practices related to desktop software evaluation and deployment; support for

mobile information workers and BYOD initiatives; current and planned adoption of

SaaS information worker applications; support for external collaboration; and attitudes

about document and application security.

©2012 IDC #236579 23

I n f o r m a t i o n W o r k e r P r o d u c t i v i t y C o s t

C a l c u l a t i o n s

To calculate the cost of lost productivity for an information worker, we multiply the

percentage of time wasted by average annual compensation:

Information workers in Western Europe say they work 44.3 hours per week, but

when they were asked to break down their workweek into the activities listed in

Figure 1, the number of hours totaled 47.1. This has been a common response

pattern in all of IDC's Hidden Costs of Information Work surveys over the past

decade: When information workers are asked about time spent by activity, the

total invariably exceeds the number of hours the respondents say they spend at

work each week. Although this may be the result of some perceived (though

unintended) overlap in our list of activities, we think it's indicative of the fact

employees generally aren't asked to perform task-based time accounting (when

they are, it's not using our specific list of activities; there are no industry

standards here). Our calculations of the percentage of time wasted are all based

on the higher figure (47.1) to be conservative.

Our estimates of the percentage of time spent dealing with frustrations (refer

back to Figure 2) that should be considered wasted time are based on a decade

of information worker productivity research, and we believe the estimates are

conservative (refer back to Tables 1 and 2). The potential for increased

productivity will be higher in many organizations.

Cost calculations assume an average annual compensation of €60,000,

including benefits and payroll-related costs (see www.statistics.gov.uk and

epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu). These exclude other fixed per-employee costs such

as office space, equipment, management time, and so forth to be conservative.

To calculate the impact of lost information worker productivity on the organization as

a whole, we multiply information worker productivity costs by the percentage of

employees who are information workers:

According to IT respondents in Western Europe, 80.6% of their employees have

dedicated PCs (the percentage ranges from 78% in Australia to 84.2% in the

United States); hence they are likely to be information workers by our definition.

This means improving the productivity of the organization's information workers by

10% is equivalent to increasing the overall organization's productivity by 8.06%.

C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e

External Publication of IDC Information and Data — Any IDC information that is to be

used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written

approval from the appropriate IDC Vice President or Country Manager. A draft of the

proposed document should accompany any such request. IDC reserves the right to

deny approval of external usage for any reason.

Copyright 2012 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden.